ADDRESS BY THE CHAIR OF THE INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS,
DR. DINAH SHELTON, AT THE INAUGURAL CEREMONY OF THE 141st
REGULAR SESSION
OF THE IACHR

Washington, D.C.

March 21, 2011

Mr. Chair of the
Permanent Council of the Organization of American States;

Distinguished
permanent representatives of the member states,

Distinguished
observers and colleagues;

Representatives of
civil society;

Ladies and
gentlemen:

It is an honor for
me to address you as the incoming Chair of the Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights at this inaugural ceremony of the Commission’s 141st
Regular Session. I am delighted to be joined here by my colleagues Mr.
Felipe Gonzales, outgoing chair of the Commission; Mr. Jose de Jesus
Orozco, First Vice-Chair; Mr. Rodrigo Escobar Gil, Second Vice-Chair; and
Commission members Luz Patricia Mejia Guerrero, Paolo Sergio Pinheiro, and
Maria Silvia Guillén. Also present with us are Mr. Santiago Canton,
Executive Secretary; Ms. Elizabeth Abi-Mershed, Assistant Executive
Secretary, and other members of our excellent and hard-working
secretariat. I know that everyone would like to acknowledge and thank our
outgoing chair, Felipe Gonzalez, for his wise and purposeful leadership
and careful direction.

As the
Inter-American Human Rights Commission commences its second half-century,
we can note that over the first five decades of its existence, it has
achieved significant progress, in cooperation with other organs of the
OAS, in strengthening the effective exercise of human rights in the region
and beyond. As someone who worked closely with the European system in its
early days, and has been involved in developing the work of both the
African and ASEAN human rights commissions, I can attest to the global
impact of the OAS’s contributions to and leadership in the field of human
rights. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights routinely
cites with approval the decisions of the Inter-American Commission and
Court. Within its first six months, the ASEAN Inter-Governmental
Commission on Human Rights traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with the
IACHR to discuss its future work and to gather inspiration from
developments in this region. In sum, the OAS can be justly proud of its
contributions to the origin of and constant evolution towards effective
promotion and protection of human rights.

Among recent
successes, we can point to the enhanced participation and cooperation of
the member states in the various activities of the Commission, including
its hearings, on site missions, development of reports, and case
processing. The high level of the delegations who engage with the
Commission during its sessions is not only rewarding, but essential to the
effectiveness of the system. The constructive dialogues that occur
facilitate the resolution of matters, often achieving friendly settlement
of cases consistent with the enjoyment of human rights, and contribute to
raising standards throughout the hemisphere.

Through its
recommendations in cases and reports, the IACHR has inspired the adoption
of new laws and the implementation of public policies that ensure enhanced
respect for the human rights of vulnerable populations, including
indigenous peoples, workers, migrants, human rights defenders, women,
children and persons of African descent. During the past year, the
Commission has released reports on
Indigenous and
Tribal Peoples' Rights over their Ancestral Lands and Natural Resources;
on Immigration in the United States: Detention and Due Process, on
Maternal Health and on Citizen Security and Human Rights, among others.
Through these reports, its rapporteurships and case processing, the IACHR
has inspired improvements in the rights of vulnerable populations, as well
as greater freedom of expression and judicial guarantees. The
Commission’s efforts in all of these areas are directed not only to
affording redress to victims of human rights violations, but to preventing
future violations, helping to build democratic systems in which the rule
of law and human rights are equally ensured.

The Citizen Security
report highlights the difficulties faced by states in responding to
organized violence and crime, yet it is based on the reality that States
need not choose between security and respect for human rights. Both can
and must be achieved. As the report highlights, citizen security must be
regarded as a public policy, whose purpose is to ensure that human rights
are respected in law and in practice, as well as in the conduct of
state institutions and agents, through a comprehensive approach to the
causes of crime and violence. A human rights perspective enables the
issues of crime and violence, and their impact in citizen security, to be
tackled through the strengthening of democratic participation and the
implementation of policies focused on the protection of the
individual. The IACHR recommends that all
member States generate the necessary institutional capacity within the
public sector to carry out the recommended measures, while making
available adequate human, technical, and economic resources. It recommends
with particular strength the need to ensure the special standards of
protection for those persons or groups that are particularly vulnerable to
violence and crime, such as children and women.

While the autonomy
of the IACHR is a central and foundational premise of the system, the work
of the Commission depends on the active participation of member states and
civil society. Last Thursday members of the Commission and the Court
joined member states in the on-going dialogue taking place through the
CAJP on strengthening the Inter-American human rights system. We look
forward to continuing this process and engaging in fruitful exchanges with
the member states about their concerns and aspirations in respect to the
Commission’s mandate and functions. As part of this process the IACHR
continues to examine its rules and regulations with a view to improvements
to ensure an open and transparent system in which states and civil society
can be engaged.

To facilitate
greater participation by civil society, essential to our functioning, we
are pleased that the Victim Assistance Fund has been inaugurated. The
IACHR adopted its rules for the Legal Assistance Fund and they entered
into force on March 1st of this year. The rules allow any
person who has a case that has been declared admissible by the Commission
(or in regard to which the IACHR has decided to join admissibility and
merits) to seek resources from the Fund to defray the expenses of
gathering and sending documentary evidence, or the appearance of the
alleged victim, witnesses of experts in hearings held by the Commission.
While the creation of this Fund is to be celebrated, its effective
functioning will depend on contributions actually arriving from member
states, which we hope will occur.

A priority during
the coming year will be to develop the proposed Friendly Settlement Group
for the resolution of cases consistent with respect for the human rights
at issue. The Commission will analyze previous friendly settlement
experiences to enhance its capability to support and follow up on friendly
settlements. We will take the opportunity to review lessons learned and
best practices. At present, reaching a friendly settlement requires
considerable time on the part of the Commissioners and officials from the
Executive Secretariat. The proposed Friendly Settlement Group, consisting
of specialized trained lawyers, will be in charge of tracking and
facilitating the process and assisting the Commissioners with those
petitions and cases where the parties have decided to embark upon this
procedure.

Recently, the IACHR
completed and adopted a Strategic Plan that maps out the priorities and
goals for the coming years. The Plan is results-oriented and ensures
accountability for the fulfillment of its goals. The recent meeting in
Ottawa, Canada, based on the Commission’s Strategic Plan, was gratifying
and gives rise to optimism that the resources necessary will be
forthcoming, to enable the Commission to execute fully and efficiently the
functions and mandates conferred upon it. One of the main challenges in
recent years has been the lack of sufficient human and financial resources
to keep pace with the volume of petitions, cases, precautionary measures,
general monitoring, and other mandates conferred on the IACHR by the OAS
member states. Reliance on external funding has been a hallmark of the
Commission and there is hope that this will be less of a need in the
future.

Undeniably, the
system has encountered difficulties and obstacles, some of which have been
resolved and others of which persist and demand continued or even priority
attention. Challenges to the functioning of the Commission remain. As
one representative mentioned during Thursday’s dialogue “justice delayed
is justice denied.” The Commission is committed to eliminating the
backlog of pending cases in a timely manner and ensuring that new
submissions are processed quickly and efficiently. But if justice
delayed is justice denied, it is equally true that a rush to judgment can
lead to substantive and procedural errors. It is critical that the
Commission proceed deliberately, to ensure that the highest standards are
maintained in fact-finding and legal analysis. Its decisions must be and
must be seen to be impartial, credible and legitimate. To fulfill the
qualitative and quantitative demands is both a challenge and a commitment.

A very significant
priority involves ensuring appropriate implementation of recommendations
of the Commission and judgments of the Court. There has been a
progressive trend in recent years respecting compliance with decisions
awarding reparations to victims, but the lack of investigation,
prosecution and punishment of those responsible for the most serious human
rights abuses remains a matter of concern. States Parties to the American
Convention have undertaken the obligation to respect and ensure all the
rights enshrined in the Convention and are responsible for organizing
their internal governance structures and adopting the necessary
legislative and regulatory reforms to comply with this obligation. The
IACHR depends on the OAS political bodies as the collective guarantors of
compliance.

As we well know,
compliance is not only a matter of political will, but it can also be a
matter of capacity. We have seen the devastating impact of natural
disasters and the need for regional solidarity and assistance to address
the complex issues associated in particular with the enjoyment of
economic, social and cultural rights. More generally, we are seeing the
necessity of ensuring respect for human rights in the process of economic
development, where too often major projects and extractive industries
operate without the controls necessary to avoid significant human rights
violations. The report on Indigenous Land and Resource Rights examines
some of the problems that have arisen and, based on inter-American human
rights standards, recommends measures to ensure that development projects
proceed consistent with human rights standards and domestic law.

Through the
Commission’s hearings and cases, we have identified a number of issues
that have not received the attention they deserve, with the result that
particularly vulnerable groups have suffered marginalization and
exclusion, including those suffering from mental and physical
disabilities, ethnic, racial and sexual minorities, and the rural poor.
In particular, widespread discrimination and harassment of individuals
based on their sexual identity and orientation have been brought to our
attention as a critical problem that we must address in the immediate
future.

While these new
issues demand attention, we must continue to monitor and respond to the
chronic problems of strengthening fragile democratic institutions,
ensuring free and fair elections, freedom of expression and assembly,
civilian control of the military, and functioning independent judicial
systems. Access to justice and redressing human rights at the domestic
level is critical to ensuring that the system does not collapse from a
rising caseload.

Though experience
the IACHR has recognized the fundamental importance of on site visits.
The willingness of member states to invite the Commission to see firsthand
conditions in their territories, to hear the accounts of individuals in
government as well as in civil society, and to observe the efforts being
made to overcome human rights problems, including the obstacles, faced, is
critical to the work of the Commission. In this respect, the IACHR is
particularly grateful to the increasing number of governments who have
announced open door policies. We encourage other government to consider
adopting this attitude towards this essential part of IACHR practice.

Two issues remain to
be mentioned. First, the importance of continuing to advance towards
universality of the system, to encourage member states to ratify
inter-American human rights treaties and ensure their effective
implementation. The Commission is ready to assist in any way that will
contribute to achieving this goal. Second, despite the priority that must
be given to monitoring and enforcing existing norms, there are issues that
can benefit from further elaboration. In this sense, the IACHR will
continue to collaborate with the Working Groups of the OAS Permanent
Council that are engaged in preparing a Draft Inter-American Convention
against Racism and All forms of Discrimination and Intolerance and a Draft
American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The challenges to
the system should not be minimized, but neither should the progress that
has been achieved over the past five decades since the Commission was
created. We cannot be satisfied with partial success, however, and the
IACHR remains dedicated to supporting the member states as they fulfill
their responsibilities to respect and ensure the human rights of all
persons. The Commission will continue to comply with its mandate to
promote and protect human rights in the region, open and willing to
improve its procedures and legal analysis to meet the expectations of all
the system’s stakeholders, especially those of the victims who have
suffered violations of their human rights.